


tell the saint of lost souls where to find me

by annperkinsface



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 20:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annperkinsface/pseuds/annperkinsface
Summary: “Vergil,” a voice says. “Wake up, Vergil.”He stirs, opening his eyes fully, though he's still not able to sit up. He stiffens at the face leaning over him, those eyes, that long golden hair, the concern that simutaneously softens and creases it. The past turned present, loved and hated and heart wrenchingly familiar. Vergil rests in the lap of a dead woman.





	tell the saint of lost souls where to find me

Vergil wakes to light on his face and a soft hand on his cheek. There is kindness in this touch but Vergil can't—won't—trust it, won't trust anything but himself and not even that, not when Mundus has played tricks on his mind too many times. He would slap it away, grasping for Yamato—Yamato, where is Yamato?—but his limbs feel thick, weighed down by an invisible force he can't see but can just barely perceive. His eyes are impossibly heavy. Just blinking them open feels like an effort too Herculean for a son of Sparda.

“Vergil,” a voice says. “Wake up, Vergil.”

He stirs, opening his eyes fully, though he's still not able to sit up. He stiffens at the face leaning over him, those eyes, that long golden hair, the concern that simutaneously softens and creases it. The past turned present, loved and hated and heart wrenchingly familiar. Vergil rests in the lap of a dead woman.

"Mother," Vergil says, voice thick, a little boy all over again in an instant, but this is a lie too. He steels himself. "No. The other. Dante's friend. The imposter."

“Not quite,” she says. “You had it right the first time, actually, although imposter is a little harsh. She seems like a lovely girl.”

She smiles at him, bright and crooked, the smile Dante had inherited, that Vergil had inherited but Dante had worn so much more easily, her hand so soft on his cheek that Vergil almost leans into it, leans into her, but it's all a trick, a lie. Eva is dead, as dead as Vergil was destined to be before he'd cleaved himself in two. He remembers now, the slow rot, the decay, the way he had wrenched Yamato through his abdomen, the physical pain only amplified by what was happening on an atomic level. He had thought he could bear it. His whole existence thus far had been pain, hadn't it? But nothing had compared to the reality of rending his soul apart.

 _It hurts_ , he had thought foolishly, like a child, and Vergil had grit his teeth and wrenched Yamato in further.  _It hurts, it hurts, I won't die this or any other day, I swear it—_

_Dante—_

A hand brushes the hair, damp with sweat, off his forehead. “There you are,” Eva says, the fondness there making his throat ache before Vergil hardens himself, guarding the remnants of his long dead heart once more. "My little boy."

“Stop this foolishness,” Vergil snaps, trying to force his limbs into action, but his body is still too weak even now. “These emotional appeals have no affect on me. Do you really think me so weak?”

Eva draws her hand back, mouth pinching. She sighs and looks down at him, caught between wistfulness and unfathomable sadness. "Never,” she says, softly, and then inexplicably smiles. “Misguided, on the other hand....well, that one is definitely up for debate, don't you think? You’ve been kind of a dumbass, Verge.”

It draws Vergil up short, takes him aback. Never in all of Mundus' mental manipulations did Eva ever speak to him in such a way. He frowns, squinting at her skeptically. She laughs in his face and even that is so at odds with his past visions of her, more in line with the distant memories of his childhood, closer now than ever. He had forgotten this aspect of her completely.

"Thought that might do the trick," Eva says, looking smug. "Old Mundus probably didn't want to ruin that dead martyred mother image, right? Sorry for calling you a dumbass but you should really see your face. It's priceless."

“How can this be?” Vergil says. “You're dead.”

“That I am,” Eva says, “but you're not exactly alive, now are you? We're in the in between, honey. Or that's what I call it anyway. It honestly just looks like our house."

He manages to sit up but that is as far as his treacherous body will allow him. His face darkens like a stormcloud but then there is a soft touch between his shoulder blades and an arm wrapping over his shoulders, helping support his weight. Eva nearly stumbles, frail human that she is, but she steadies, flashing Vergil a smile that he ignores in favor of looking around. He sees that it is true. They are in the old music room. There, the white curtains; there, the window seat Vergil favored above all others, where he would hide from the world and grasp at a beauty he could only find in books; there, the piano covered in a thick layer of dust but the sheet music undisturbed; there, Vergil's violin still on its stand, the wood not having succumbed to flame. His childhood, meticulously preserved all around him, and his dead mother in the middle of it all, intently watching his face.

"There are so many memories in this room," Eva says, quietly. "You took to the violin so well and you were always curled up in that corner, right over there, reading William Blake. And you would beg me to play the piano, remember? 'Just one more, Mother. One more.' And one would become two and two would become three and your father would have the audacity to scold me for keeping you up past your bedtime when that man was the softest touch around. He didn't even know what a bedtime was until I told him!"

“That was a long time ago,” Vergil says. A lifetime in fact. Those long, golden days are behind him, a happiness he can never grasp again and wouldn't even if he could. There are greater things to seek, he thinks, but after being splintered apart so many times a part of him wonders what it would be like to grasp even a sliver of that peace for an instant. To able to rest his heavy bones.

“Not long enough,” Eva says. “But that is the dead's lot, I suppose. And you’re a grown man, not a little boy. Your problems can’t be fixed with a song or a blanket fort.” She touches his face, turning his face to hers, and Vergil lets her, mouth pressed into a sharp line, wondering why he is allowing a ghost so many liberties. She smiles at him, the curve of her mouth unbearably gentle, and Vergil recalls with painful clarity how he would have once done anything for that smile. "Sit with me please?"

“Do as you will,” Vergil says stiffly. 

The window seat is as comfortable as he remembers. Vergil is grateful to rest his heavy limbs even as he loathes having to rely upon Eva's assistance. She leaves him be once he settles, retracting her hands and tucking some of that long hair behind her ear. There is a quality to the light here in this spot, a softness that Vergil associates with his long gone boyhood, slanting upon his face and the yellowed pages of his beloved books. Back when the world was small but safe, a universe of two, Vergil happily suspended in their orbit. Protected. Loved.

“You're going to be yourself again very soon,” Eva says. “There's something I want to say to you before you do but only if you'll hear me.”

“That's never stopped you before,” Vergil says because it hasn't. He's never known Eva to curb her tongue, to not speak her heart or mind.

There is a sweet melancholy to Eva’s smile that Vergil recognizes, remembering how he and Dante would get up to all manner of mischief the rare times they glimpsed it just to chase it away. He frowns, disconcerted to realize it strikes at his heart as precisely now as it did then. “I was never dead before,” she says, “and you had never hated me."

The world holds its breath or maybe that’s just Vergil, all the air leaving his lungs in one fell swoop. He looks at Eva, eyes wide, throat strangely tight. “That's—”

“Don't say it's not true,” Eva says. “Please. I'm not mad.”

Vergil swallows. Swallows again. He roughly clears his throat. "...very well. Speak.”

She turns her body into him, eyes bright and earnest. She doesn’t make to touch him but Vergil can see how much every part of her yearns to. “I’m sorry I couldn't find you,” Eva says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you or your brother safe. I’m sorry you’ve had to be so strong for so long. I’m sorry—” Here her mouth trembles, her voice wavers, but she masters herself, taking in a deep shuddery breath. Eva looks at him, tender, resolute, and Vergil wonders how he could have ever thought her frail. “I'm sorry there was even a second of your life where you doubted how much I love you.”

“Mother,” Vergil says, the sound wrenched out of him, and it’s foolishness, all of it, a lie or a trick or a dream that will fade come morning but the truth resonates in his bones, in the divided soul he can just faintly grasp as pinpricks of light in the corner of his eyes. He's never wanted to believe anything more. “I know,” he says, roughly. “I think I’ve always known.”

Didn't he forsake his father's power once, grasping desperately for the last memento he had of her? Cast into hell that first time with only her amulet in his hand and her memory in his heart? For all his doubt and anger and misplaced hatred Vergil's short time with her remains forever shining and golden, Eva the best and brightest thing in his and Dante's world. No one else's loss could be so profound as to split them so irrevocably apart.

Vergil clings to her, pressing his face to her shoulder. She wraps her arms around him, pressing her lips to his hair. How strange, he thinks, to hold and be held. To be in his dead mother’s embrace and not feel weak or shameful or anything but deeply, profoundly grateful.

“I won’t remember this,” Vergil says. “Will I?”

“Maybe,” Eva says. “Maybe not. But sometimes we find reminders where we least expect them." She tilts up his face, placing a tender kiss on his brow. Vergil closes his eyes but can just picture the exact shape of her smile behind his stinging eyelids. "You'll find your way, Vergil. I know you will."

He forgets but the memory lingers, as gentle as the sunlight on his face, as bright and unexpected as the boy—Nero—stubbornly standing his ground, not giving quarter, all heart and humanity, just like Vergil’s mother before him.

 

 

  
 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i am still baffled as to how I went from having no feelings about vergil to ALL the feelings about vergil. thanks v.
> 
> anyway I finished this instead of sleeping off my hangover because I live to deprive myself of sleep I guess


End file.
